Another New Chapter

Our story begins at the magical school of Hogwarts.
Hogwarts is a school for young and aspiring witches and wizards.
The students find their niches within their Houses: Gryffindor for the brave, Ravenclaw for the intelligent, Hufflepuff for the humble, and Slytherin for the cunning.

Of the four houses, Gryffindor and Slytherin clashed the most; although, Slytherin tended to clash with everyone. By tradition, all Gryffindors hated Slytherins and all Slytherins hated Gryffindors. There could never be any amiability.

Megan Malfoy was the eldest daughter of the Malfoys who were notorious for their affiliation with the Dark Lord. Megan was a Slytherin.

Percy Weasley was the third son in the Weasley family, born with the typical red hair and freckles. Percy was a Gryffindor.

They despised each other. She thought he was arrogant and much too concerned with the rules. He thought she had a reckless disregard for the rules; he also thought she was cunning—and not in a good way. But they didn’t really know each other. They passed their first six years of magical education at each other’s throats, constantly competing with each other for the top spot in their year.
xxx

Seventh year began as it usually did for Megan. She said a stiff goodbye to her parents, making sure to look haughtily at a pair of muggles sending their child off to school as she did so. Her parents didn’t know Megan. They assumed she was exactly as they wanted her to be. But she wasn’t. She didn’t care about blood or money or loyalties. She just wanted to be herself.

She couldn’t be herself; she never could. She longed for the day she could escape the confining walls of her childhood manor; she longed for the day when she could escape from her parents. She was close. At the end of the year, she would be gone—finally free.

Megan boarded the train quickly, eager to escape her parents and her tattling younger brother. Even when she was away from her parents, Draco was always around to report on Meagan’s doings. She had to keep up her charade constantly.

Finding an empty compartment, she placed her stuff inside and set off for the Prefects Carriage. She had been made Head Girl and needed to meet the Head Boy before they began their meeting. Megan only hoped that the Head Boy wasn’t—

She let out an irritated sigh as she saw the HB badge shining on Percy Weasley’s robes. It wasn’t enough that this boy bothered her to no end, now he was Head Boy!

“Weasley.” she greeted shortly, eager to get the meeting over with.

He glanced up, his annoying blue eyes meeting hers. “Malfoy.” he retorted.

“How do you want to do the meeting?” she asked.
“I’ll handle the meeting. You can just…sit there.” he decided arrogantly.

She clenched her fists in irritation; she hated the freckled boy before her.

“Fine.” she hissed, not wanting to fight with him before the school year had even begun.
Megan was sure of one thing: Percy Weasley was an insufferable git.

xxx

It seemed that Percy was in all of her classes, much to her dismay. She could never escape him. The days wore on. She had to see Percy everyday. It seemed he was everywhere. They were in all of the same classes. They were paired together for prefect patrols. And on Saturdays and Sundays when they didn’t have class, she managed to run into him in the library. He was everywhere! He was always around—all the time!

xxx

“Class,” Professor Babbling began, “As you have all taken Ancient Runes since your third year, I have decided that for your final year, you shall all do an advanced project. I will be dividing you into pairs. From there, I want you to write a novel with your partner. This novel will be written entirely in runes.”

Babbling began to read off the pairs; Megan waited anxiously for her name. Chances are she’d have to do the project herself anyway, so she was just curious as to whose name she would be signing to the project.

“Malfoy and Weasley.”

Her jaw dropped. No. This couldn’t be happening!
But it was true.

Weasley made his way over to her and took the seat next to her.
“Look,” he began, “I will do the project. Wouldn’t want you messing—”

“Shut up. As much as I’d rather do the project without any help, Babbling will want an accurate account of who contributed what.”

“Meet in the library tomorrow after dinner? Seven?” He suggested, clearly resigned to having to work with her.

“Fine.”

xxx

Their first work session did not go well. Weasley was astonishingly arrogant, in Meagan’s eyes. He wouldn’t even take her suggestions. She ended storming away from him.
xxx

The time they spent together grew as they talked about their project.

“Well what should it be about?”

“How about the ancient practice of—”

“No. Something fiction.”

“Fine.” he bristled.

“How about a story about a young girl—”

“Who bends to the whim of her parents and is discriminatory against people because of their blood?”

She glared at him. “How about a boy who’s an insufferable know-it-all who thinks he’s better than everyone else!”

At that point, Madam Pince threw them out of the library.

“I can’t believe you.” she muttered. “Pince loves me.”

“Get over yourself,” he retorted. “This is your fault.”

“How is it my fault?” she glared at the tall, thin boy before her. With his red hair, freckles, and glasses, if she didn’t hate him so much, she might’ve found him cute. “You were yelling first! You made the accusations first—”

“They are not accusations if I know they’re true!”

“You do not know anything about me!”

“Please, I know enough! You are a Slytherin and a Malfoy!”

“You do not know me.” she hissed. “You do not want to.”

“Maybe if you weren’t so uptight and closed off and buried in a book—”

“This coming from a supremely arrogant arse!” she yelled.

“I doubt that there is anything more to you than your parents’ money.”

“You don’t know me.” she promised. “You think you’re so brilliant…but you don’t know a thing. I am nothing like my parents. I want nothing to do with them. As soon as I graduate, I am gone. I am never coming back. But you would not know that. You see my House and my family and all you see is a stuck-up snob. I was right about you. You think you are so great but you hid behind your knowledge and your facts to disguise the fact that you are just as scared as everyone else. You are not worth the breath to it takes to argue with you.”

xxx

A week passed without so much as a glance between the pair. Sure, they still had every class together, but they stayed away from each other. They had patrols together, but they did not speak.

At first, she had been furious. That he would so unflinchingly judge her had angered her. But then again, how could she blame him? He merely bought into the front that she put up. The truth was that she wanted him to know that she wasn’t like that. But she had never given him the chance to.

Unfortunately, she didn’t know what to say to him. Luckily for Megan, she didn’t have to figure it out. A week after her fight with Percy, Megan got a parcel.

In it, was the first chapter of their novel and a note that read, “Next chapter is up to you.”
Once she found solace in the library, away from the din of the Great Hall, she took up the parchment and began to translate the first chapter.

“Our story does not begin at the beginning. Rather we are six years into our story. Our heroine is a dashing girl of seventeen who is oppressed by the expectations of her family.

“Our hero is an intelligent boy of seventeen who jumps to conclusions before he gets all of the facts. Our hero and heroine have been at odds for six years, but the relationship between them will soon be faced with a catalyst that could change everything…”

Once she finished the first chapter, she began to write the second.
They traded on and off writing chapter after chapter before they had a chance to talk to each other.

They met in the library, finally, with six chapters written.

“Hey.” she smiled.

“Hey Meg.” he replied. “I liked what you wrote.”

“Me too. I mean…I liked what you wrote.”

“Thanks.”
xxx

Later that day, Megan was relaxing in the Prefects bathroom. Wrapped in a towel, she was running water into the bathtub; the air was filled with the sweet scent of lavender.

The sound of a door opening caught her attention; turning around, she screamed.

“Percy Weasley!” She screeched as she clutched the towel tightly around herself. “Get out!”

The boy stuttered as he flushed a deep scarlet.

“Get out!” she yelled, splashing water at him.
“Hey!” he yelled as the water hit him.

In retaliation, he splashed water back at her. Before either of them knew what they were doing, they had started a water war.

By the time they had both tired themselves, they were breathing heavily. Percy was drenched with water; his glasses were covered in water droplets, but he was smiling. Megan’s hair was dripping as she held the towel to her body but she was smiling.

Neither of them knew what they were doing as they moved in closer toward one another. They leaned in closer. He was going to kiss her.

Then Moaning Myrtle giggled and Percy stepped back from Meg.

“I am sorry.” he mumbled, refusing to look at him. Carefully, he turned and walked out of the bathroom; he was cautious so as to avoid slipping on the wet tile.

Megan sighed and sat down on the ledge of the bathtub.
He was going to kiss her.
She had wanted him to kiss her.
xxx

The following night found them in the library working on their project.
With a blush on his face, Percy handed her the next chapter.
While she read it, she felt his eyes on her; she found translating the runes was difficult when he watched her.

“He hadn’t known what to say to her. He found her stunning, gorgeous, beautiful. He didn’t know what to say. She was standing before him in nothing but a towel. His mouth was dry and his palms were sweaty; if he tried to say anything, he knew it wouldn’t make any sense. He should have kissed her.

“The next day she was sitting across from him, looking just as beautiful as she had the night before. He wanted to kiss her.”

“What do you think?” he asked nervously.

“Perce…” she began, unable to think of anything to say. So she put her pen to the parchment and scratched out her response. She handed the parchment back to him.

Percy translated quickly with red ears.

“She wanted to kiss him.”

And so, Percy Weasley did the only thing that made sense; he leaned across the table and kissed her.
xxx

The students had been summoned to the Great Hall. There was a tense and worried feeling in the air that infected the students and made their movements frenzied. No one knew what was going on.

Once the students were congregated in the Great Hall, the news spread quickly. Sirius Black had slashed up the portrait protecting the Gryffindor common room. All of the students would be spending the night in the Great Hall while the teachers checked the castle. It was the duty of the prefects and the Head Boy and the Head Girl to walk around the hall.

The younger Slytherins looked to her for answers.

“Look,” she said, “Black slashed the Gryffindor portrait. He’s after a Gryffindor. Not us Slytherins.” she said it because she knew her brother was listening in.

But once that was done, she found she was frightened. When the Great Hall was quiet except with the sound of relaxed breathing, she moved to where the red-headed boy lay.

“Perce,” she whispered. “Percy.” she shook him slightly.

“Meg?” he asked. “What’s wrong?” he sat and ran his hand through his hair, serving only to make it messier. He’d fallen asleep with his glasses on; they hung askew on his face.

“What if he’s still here?” she whispered.

“Meg.” he said, grasping her shoulders. “Calm down. I’m fine. You’re fine. Nothing’s going to happen.”

But poor Percy was wrong. Something was going to happen. For weeks, they’d been meeting in secret. Kissing, simply being together. But it couldn’t last.

When the winter holiday rolled around, they had to part. They were both going home. She gave him a quick kiss before leaving the train and heading toward her family. Her brother was already with his parents. Megan caught the end of her brother’s words.

“I saw them Father. They were kissing in—” Megan’s stomach dropped.

“Is this true?” her father turned his cold eyes to her.

“I—”

“Have you been….kissing that…blood traitor Peter Weasley.”

“Percy.” she corrected automatically.

Her father’s eyes grew wide.

“No. No! I…haven’t.” she swore. She turned around to see that Percy was watching their exchange, well within earshot. “Why would I…why would I waste my time on someone like him?” she sneered, all the while hoping Percy would understand but he turned away.

When Megan returned to her home with her parents, an owl was waiting for her.
It was Percy’s next chapter.

“The blood raced through his veins. After all that time, she was truly everything she pretended to be. He felt foolish for believing in her. She’d proven to him who she was.”

Megan fought back the tears on her face. She had hurt him.

“He had only one choice. He had to move on and forget the girl who had turned to be nothing more than a pretender. All that was left to do was graduate and he would never have to see her face.”

She knew what she had to do. She wrote the final chapter with a flourish.
Once at the train station, she shook with nerves as she tried to spot the telltale red hair of the boy who held her heart in his hands.

Then Megan saw him. His robes were a bit short, the recognizable sign of hand-me-down clothing. His glasses were slightly off and his hair was wild, a new look for him. He looked disheveled.

Megan took one look at her stiff family and called out his name.

“Percy!”

Her father looked at her sharply.
“Percy!” she yelled again. The boy turned and caught her gaze. Pushing through the crowd, she stopped in front of him.

“Here.” she said, handing him the final copy of their book before leaning up to kiss him.

“And so our story ends here, but this is not the ending. This is merely the new beginning of another new chapter in their story.”